Blood Secret by Kathryn Lasky Page A

melting through the curtains of amber light. She found the putty can. But she didn’t want to leave. She touched the walls. They were sandstone. When she looked at her fingertips, there were minute particles that left on her skin a reddish tinge. Did she hear something in a corner to her right? Was it the mouse? Certainly she could never hear a spider, not even down here where the silence was so thick. But it seemed as if something furtive and hidden was happening. She turned toward the corner where she thought the noise might have come from. The window behind her let in the last of the day’s light and illuminated a trunk with a high, curved top. It stood behind the veils of amber light, apart and aloof and with a muffled gleam, faint like the glow of a guttering flame. Yet it seemed to almost dare Jerry to come closer. She took one hesitant step and then another. There was silence, complete and perfect silence. Flawless, indestructible silence. Butthen Jerry felt a cold chill and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Children’s voices. Faint laughter melted out of the amber light. She turned and tore up the stairs.
    Jerry knew she would have to go back.

Chapter 8
    J ERRY WAITED UNTIL midnight, when her aunt would be asleep. Then she crept out of bed. She looked out the kitchen window. Everything was so quiet, so still. The entire land seemed wrapped in silence. She was not frightened. She went down the stairs, her eyes adjusting to the darkness that was not really darkness. She was not really surprised when she finally saw the fat spider suspended on a silken thread just by the trunk. It was as if the spider had been waiting for her and decided to spin another web just to have something to do while waiting.
    Jerry ran her fingertips lightly over the top of the trunk. A shiver ran through her. Her fingers seemed electrified. She swept them across again. Did she feel a design in the top? She bent her face closer and noticed that there wasa pattern of little pinpricks. It was as if her fingertips had been dusted with iron filings and the pinpricks were the magnets drawing them to the trunk. These were letters she was touching. She could deduce their shape. The first was an s . She could feel the opposing curves that made the letter. The next was much smaller, a d possibly, and then a straight vertical line. At the bottom it met with another at a right angle. An l ! So the initials must be SdL.
    She lifted the latch. This time it was not silent, and the creak startled her. But the latch simply fell off into her hand. How long had it been since anyone had opened this trunk? Had Constanza lived ninety-four years and never opened it? Did this constitute some sort of trespassing? Jerry wondered. As she lifted its lid, she realized that this was beyond right or wrong.
    A veil of dust drifted down from the interior of the lid. The contents seemed neatly arranged, although Jerry could not tell at first exactly what they were. Some were shallow boxes; some things were wrapped in ancient-looking tissue paper, some in Spanish newspapers. There were odd bits of fabric, a picture frame with no picture, a Bible, a cuptarnished nearly black with age, something that looked like a corncob with a bit of worn fabric wrapped around its middle. Nothing too unusual at first glance. And yet all strangely compelling. Who did this stuff belong to, these bits and pieces? She sensed that she had at her fingertips the fragments of a puzzle. An extraordinary kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle of time and space. The cup had been wrapped in newspaper, but there was no date on the paper. The printing, however, looked odd. She sensed that it had come from a time even before her Aunt Constanza had been born. When she set the cup back, she noticed the corner of what appeared to be some lace. She dared not pull on it. Yellow with age, the lace seemed as if it might turn to dust with the slightest touch. Carefully she lifted the Bible and